Purpose:
- Studying the abundance, distribution and zoning of dolphin habitats in the coastal waters of Khuzestan
- Collecting and producing information about the environmental, ecological, and human characteristics and the most important factors of threats and pressure on the humpback dolphin. - Obtaining demographic information of the species such as group size and proportion of newborns
- Obtaining information on the abundance and probability of seeing the species in the study area for use in ecotourism purposes. Observation time was not provided.
Observations before and after the project implementation period (2014-2016) are also presented. Registered as part of the International Marine Mammal Area under the title "NORTHERN GULF AND CONFLUENCE OF THE TIGRIS, EUPHRATES, AND KURAN IMMA"
The habitat specialist Indian Ocean humpback dolphin (Sousa plumbea) is the second most common cetacean in the Persian Gulf. Mousa Bay in the northwestern Persian Gulf is an important, but highly industrialised habitat for this species. We developed a systematic and comprehensive distance sampling survey carried out from 2014 to 2016 to estimate abundance and population density of humpback dolphin in this bay. To evaluate distribution pattern of the species, eight environmental variables were measured and employed in a zero-inflated generalised additive model (ZINB GAM). With an estimated abundance of 92 animals (64–131, 95% CI) and density of 0.123 animal / km2 (0.086–0.176, 95% CI), our results revealed Mousa Bay as one of the largest populations of humpback dolphin in northern latitudes of its global range.